YouthSpill

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers -- the third in our summer series on the Gulf oil failure -- Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim are joined by Chris Sloan and Andrea Zeller. We talk about building curriculum around the Gulf oil spill and other topics, wondering how to keep student self-motivated inquiry at the center of our work while also introducing topics such as the environment, art history, obesity, AP English, or the earthquake in Haiti and other current events.

Chris Sloan teaches at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, and he is a member of the Wasatch Range Writing Project. He teaches digital photography, media studies and AP English. Chris, Paul and Susan and their students have been working together on a school-based social network, Youth Voices for the last six years.

Andrea Zellner has been a frequent guest on TTT this summer, we are delighted to say! Andrea is a former high school teacher in Michigan, who taught both English and Biology. Currently Andrea works for the Red Cedar Writing Project.

Susan Ettenheim teaches at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City. Susan and Paul have been doing Teachers Teaching Teachers together for almost five years. Susan teaches computer arts, art, and digital photography, and she is the librarian as well. This year Susan is also teaching a Caribbean Art History course for the Virtual High School.

Paul Allison teaches at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, Queens. He is also the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. Paul teaches English and he started a school/community garden this spring.

We hope you enjoy this conversation between four veteran teachers. Just as we build on each others ideas, we hope you build on ours and let us know what you are thinking in the comments below.

We invite you to join us each Wednesday this summer to listen to teachers from the Gulf and to hear how teachers are planning to bring these issues into their classrooms this fall.

Obama seems to have missed another opportunity in a major address that he gave about the BP oil spill last month (June 15). Earlier he was right to call the Gulf Oil Disaster our environmental 9/11. Both are life-changing disasters that have many of us asking where we need to stop compromising.

On Teachers Teaching Teachers this summer, we are asking what needs to change in our schools and in our lives as teachers. We hope that Thomas L. Friedman’s comments in May 2010 won’t be the last word on the 9/11 comparison. “Sept. 11, 2001, was one of those rare seismic events that create the possibility to energize the country to do something really important and lasting that is too hard to do in normal times.”

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we talked about what we can do now that we might not have done before this disaster or failure. This is the second of a series of shows we will be doing on the Gulf oil disaster.

In the previous podcast (TTT 204), we had a thoughtful, productive conversation with history teacher Diana Laufenbergabout responses in our curriculum to the Gulf Oil Disaster. One of her ideas was to set up Skype connections for our students with people in Gulf states to personalize and more deeply understand the impact of this ongoing disaster. To move this idea forward, we were joined by teacher-consultants from the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project — Carolyn Kirk, Tasha Whitton, and Ellen Steigman — on this podcast.

On this podcast, we wre also be joined by teachers Matt Montagne and Andrea Zellner — two of our favorite angry, young environmentalists!

Won’t you join us too? We will continue our conversations about what needs to change all summer on Teachers Teaching Teachers. We want to know what you are thinking. Join us in the chat room or get ready to join us on Skype at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

This is the first in a series of TTT webcasts that we are doing this summer in response to BP's gushing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. We are asking teachers from all over to join us each Wednesday evening this summer to put together a curriculum that will help our students build their own responses to the human, animal, and ecological devestation that has been happening every day since April. Incredibly, this "spill" promises to continue wrecking damage into the fall and winter.

Diana Laufenberg, a teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, started us in this series of shows with a the powerful, clear-eyed stance of a history teacher commited to helping her students find their own answers to "How does this go on?" Diana's descriptions of a project in which her students made infographics this spring will inspire, and her ideas for connecting her students to students in the Gulf will make you want to join us in this endeavor. We also spoke to a math teacher, Matthew, from Pennsylvania.

Diana is a true life-long learner. She currently works with 11th grade students at SLA. Experiential education is an integral part of her educational pursuits taking students from the classroom to the real world and back again. Before finding her way to Philadelphia, she was an active member of the teaching community in Flagstaff, AZ where she was named Technology Teacher of the Year for Arizona and a member of the Governor’s Master Teacher Corps.

In the second and fourth webcasts in June, podcasts of which will be available later this week, we were privilidged to have teachers from the Gulf join us. We are working to find a place for all of us to contribute resources, connections, and ideas. On this webcast we talk about the possibility of connecting in some way through the Learning Network of the New York Times. (See "The Gulf Oil Spill in the Classroom.") Another possibility is for some of us to work with Suzie Boss and the teachers who have signed up for Edutopia's Project-Based Learning Camp, which will start in the middle of July (although it's now closed to new participants). Also Matt Montagne started this Google Doc to begin collecting our thoughts, resources and plans.

Please enjoy to this podcast. Diana gets us off to a great start on this journey! And please plan to join us this summer 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times.

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

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